AT&T, IBM among winners of $50B federal deal

The U.S. government has selected 29 companies, including AT&T, IBM and EDS, for its massive 10-year, $50 billion IT services deal known as Alliant.

One network service provider that didn’t make the cut was Verizon Business, which bid on Alliant but wasn’t awarded a contract.

The General Services Administration (GSA) announced the 29 Alliant winners at a press conference on Tuesday.

Altogether, 66 companies bid on the Alliant project, which will be the primary contract for purchasing IT services across the federal market for the next decade.

Alliant is available to all civilian and defense agencies for purchasing IT systems design, software engineering and other services. Among the types of projects that Alliant will support include e-government, logistics and financial systems.

"Alliant is a key component of [our] portfolio of technology solutions," said Jim Williams, GSA’s federal acquisition service commissioner, in a statement. "With its expansive scope, access to the best in class in the private sector and ability to provide customized solutions tailored to agencies’ unique IT needs, we can again prove that GSA is at the forefront of serving the acquisition needs of the federal government."

Alliant winners include systems integrators, such as Computer Sciences Corp. and Systems Applications International, as well as military contractors, such as General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Consulting firms Accenture and BearingPoint also made it to the Alliant winners’ circle.

Alliant is designed to foster competition among the winners throughout the life of the program. Federal agencies will submit task orders to the Alliant program, and Alliant vendors can bid on the individual jobs. How much money each Alliant vendor will earn from the program depends on how successful it is at winning these task orders.